Even as the evidence of global warming mounts, the international
response to this serious threat is coming unraveled. The United
States has formally withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol; other
key nations are facing difficulty in meeting their Kyoto
commitments; and developing countries face no limit on their
emissions of the gases that cause global warming. In this clear and
cogent book-reissued in paperback with an afterword that comments
on recent events--David Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol was
never likely to become an effective legal instrument. He explores
how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic
alternative.
Global warming continues to dominate environmental news as
legislatures worldwide grapple with the process of ratification of
the December 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The collapse of the November 2000
conference at the Hague showed clearly how difficult it will be to
bring the Kyoto treaty into force. Yet most politicians,
policymakers, and analysts hailed it as a vital first step in
slowing greenhouse warming. David Victor was not among them.
Kyoto's fatal flaw, Victor argues, is that it can work only if
emissions trading works. The Protocol requires industrialized
nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to specific
targets. Crucially, the Protocol also provides for so-called
"emissions trading," whereby nations could offset the need for
rapid cuts in their own emissions by buying emissions credits from
other countries. But starting this trading system would require
creating emission permits worth two trillion dollars--the largest
single invention of assets by voluntary international treaty in
world history. Even if it were politically possible to distribute
such astronomical sums, the Protocol does not provide for adequate
monitoring and enforcement of these new property rights. Nor does
it offer an achievable plan for allocating new permits, which would
be essential if the system were expanded to include developing
countries.
The collapse of the Kyoto Protocol--which Victor views as
inevitable--will provide the political space to rethink strategy.
Better alternatives would focus on policies that control emissions,
such as emission taxes. Though economically sensible, however, a
pure tax approach is impossible to monitor in practice. Thus, the
author proposes a hybrid in which governments set targets for both
emission quantities and tax levels. This offers the important
advantages of both emission trading and taxes without the
debilitating drawbacks of each.
Individuals at all levels of environmental science, economics,
public policy, and politics-from students to professionals--and
anyone else hoping to participate in the debate over how to slow
global warming will want to read this book.
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